NYT: The OSP revealed: ... "Leave no dot unconnected."

[Trajan]

How Pair's Finding on Terror Led to Clash on Shaping Intelligence

from James Risen of the NY Times.

This is a snip about Douglas Feith and his minions finding amazing 'connections' between every character: pure and unsavory, in every direction they looked ... This was the source that was 'stovepiped' into the Pentagon AND the VP's office in the WH ....

-snip-

Their analysis covered plenty of controversial ground. The two men identified members of the Saudi royal family who they said had aided Al Qaeda over the years. They warned that Al Qaeda had operatives in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, where they were establishing ties with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah. They suspected Abu Nidal, an aging Palestinian terrorist leader living in Baghdad, of being an indirect link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, even though many other analysts believed that he was essentially retired and that his once-fearsome organization had been shattered. Mr. Nidal died under mysterious circumstances in Baghdad in 2002.

The Pentagon conclusions were at odds with years of C.I.A. analysis. The agency was skeptical that governments as diverse as those in Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Iran could be linked to anything like a cohesive terrorist network. The C.I.A. and the D.I.A. believed that Feith's team had greatly exaggerated the significance of reported contacts among extremist groups and Arab states. The C.I.A. saw little evidence, for example, that the Sunni-dominated Qaeda and the Shiite-dominated Hezbollah had worked together on terrorist attacks.

And there was little proof that Mr. Hussein was working on terror plots with Mr. bin Laden, a religious extremist who viewed the Baghdad regime as a corrupt, secular enemy. "The divides do matter," a senior C.I.A. official said. "But if you work hard enough in this nasty world, you can link just about anybody to anybody else."

Another agency official summed up the Feith team's work by saying, "Leave no dot unconnected."

-snip-


What arseholes ....

More : http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/28/politics/28INTE.html?hp

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. Kick

[Old and In the Way]

2. Erroneous conclusions, by incompetent politically motivated analysts,

demanded by a delusional administration.

Why would anyone think George Bush had anything in his background that would make him a fit candidate to be POTUS? SCOTUS might consider sticking to Legal decisions and let the people determine, as we did in 2000, who should be elected President.